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I dunno what video I saw, but apparently different than the one you saw; it said some space criminal/pirate got exiled to an isolated region of space, and always wanted to go back to Earth. The story's about his kid going back instead. Dunno if that helps.

Considering the font of the word "Space" in Space Command [spacepatrolmovie.com] matches that in Space Patrol [jezner.com], I'm guessing a remake/remix of the old series, especially given the DNS name of the first link.

To each of you, what is your opinion on the current state of science fiction in today's films? Obviously, there's been an increase in all film categories with more movies coming out but what do you like and dislike about films in this era? Care to comment the remake of Total Recall? Or 3D in blockbusters like Avatar?

There are a lot of really good sci-fi films that have come out in the last 10 years or so. Peculiarly, rarely do they do well in the theater. So, if the community isn't willing to back the product why cater to it? Hell, a cheesy-looking Snow White/Conan mashup just dominated last weekend because the target audience supports their genre.

Several of my favourite sci-fi films of recent years were only distributed on a limited release around my neck of the woods. For both Moon and A Scanner Darkly, none of my local cinemas were showing it and I had to travel an hour and a half by train (and book a day off work) to see them. It's no surprise that neither of them had record-breaking results at the box office.

What films? Seriously, how many sci-fi films involving space travel have there been in the last 5-10 years? Not many. Most "sci-fi" films these days are more like "Source Code", which I liked, but it didn't involve space travel in any way, and "Hunger Games", which again I'm pretty sure didn't involve space travel, but instead was just about how much the future is going to suck (didn't bother with that one myself). The only ones I can think of offhand from recently are Avatar of course, Pandorum, Moon,

Sci-fi does not need to involve space travel. Source Code was an excellent bit of light sci-fi- the fact that it's "fi" was focused on "sci" of dimension-hopping, time-travelling brain-in-a-jar escapades rather than rocket ships doesn't make it not sci-fi. You'll be telling me that William Gibson's seminal Neuromancer isn't real sci-fi next...

Yes, you're right that sci-fi doesn't have to involve space travel, I never said it did. That's why I added the phrase "involving space travel", because I'm lamenting the lack of sci-fi films involving space travel these days. Dimension-hopping sci-fi is nice and all, but I really like space travel sci-fi, and I'd like to see more of it, and for some reason (unlike the 70s and 80s), there's a severe lack of it now.

What films? Seriously, how many sci-fi films involving space travel have there been in the last 5-10 years?

Serenity (Although that's more than 5 years now...)
Sunshine? (OK if you ignored the plot and watched the pretty lights)
Star Trek 90210?
John Carter?
Wall-E? (OK, scraping the barrel now... you may have a point)

On the other hand, how many have there ever been - especially if you rule out alien invasion flicks?

Good point on Serenity, though yes, it's been more than 5 years. There's also Clooney's Solaris, but that's pretty close to 10 years I think. The last Star Trek movie was surely at least 10 years ago (Nemesis).

On the other hand, how many have there ever been - especially if you rule out alien invasion flicks?

There were tons of them in the 70s and 80s. Silent Running, Outland, Alien, Aliens, Star Wars (4-6), most of the Star Trek movies, 2001, 2010, Dark Star, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Black Hol

It was a lot better than Nemesis, Insurrection, The Final Frontier, and probably Generations as well.

They were all fairly painful.
For Nemesis, I would have had the Federation prevent a Klingon takeover of the crippled Romulan Empire, re-igniting Klingon/Federation hostilities, and having the Romulans be grateful, but still bitter that they are once again squeezed between two enemies. Picard would have been a Commodore, in much the same way that Janeway should not be an Admiral.

For the latest Star Trek, I would have ditched the whole Red Matter nonsense, and used the Guardian of Forever to do the "reset

Hard sci fi or Soft sci fi? There are no hard sci fi movies, at least from the past 20 years, or at least soft sci fi outnumbers hard sci fi by about 200 to 1. In books I'd dare say the ratios approach 50:50 or at least not as intensely skewed.

Your kickstarter page lists Asimov and Clarke as partial inspiration implies hard sci fi, yet also has PR stuff about how people "like the look" which implies ultra-soft sci fi.

For people who don't know the difference, just Fing google it, or wikipedia it, and the reason why its important is people who like one genre invariably can't stand the other genre and even make comments about how they can't imagine why someone would like the opposite genre. Sometimes the trash talking is the easiest way to understand the perspectives.

While I agree that soft scifi is much more popular than hard scifi, I would point out that there are still plenty of hard movies being made. Pitch Black, Moon, Gattica, Sunshine, and Prometheus are pretty hard science fiction. Even the new Battlestar Galactica was pretty hard (most of the time). You can still get a movie made in about any genre if you have a good story to tell. You're not going to get the same budget for a more serious story as a popcorn blockbuster, of course. But that comes with the terri

Yes, the writers avoided some soft science cliches like bumpy forehead aliens, space anomalies and time warps and stuff. There's still plenty of soft science to go around. What's even more damning, they were inconsistent with their own soft science in the show.

To put it another way, it would be like someone saying "I didn't like the simplistic morality of Lord of the Rings with dark lords and fairy tale thinking" so he comes up with a low fantasy conflict between hum

The "new" BSG was merely remaking the "old" BSG, and I used to be able to find a link explaining which world war 2 aircraft carrier movie each old BSG episode was ripping off. There was the WWII movie about the carrier that caught fire after the kamikaze hit it, then there was the WWII movie dramatization about the battle of midway, and they even got that weird pink submarine movie in there wedged in kinda sideways. The ultimate example of soft sci fi, we'll just rip off someone elses movie, and add laser

Huh? I haven't seen Pitch Black or Sunshine, but the only one in that list that's "hard sci-fi" is Moon, and probably Gattaca (which doesn't really involve space travel, just genetics; a few shots of people getting in spacecraft really doesn't count). If there's anything in the story that's beyond current physics, then it's not "hard sci-fi", and that includes artificial gravity (except that made by rotation), FTL jumping/warp drive, etc. It also pretty much rules out most travel to other star systems, u

"If there's anything in the story that's beyond current physics, then it's not "hard sci-fi", and that includes artificial gravity (except that made by rotation), FTL jumping/warp drive, etc. "

I think your criteria for hard SF is too restrictive. Traditionally, the difference between hard and soft SF is that hard SF focuses on a realistic and logical application of science and technology, while soft SF focuses on social or non-scientific issues in a fictional setting.

While some authors prefer to restrict themselves to a rigorous application of known-science only, others allow notions such as FTL and/or artificial gravity to creep in to enable their stories to be told. Peter Hamilton, Arthur C. Clarke, Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov, Robert Forward, James Hogan, and many others have written arguably hard science fiction stories that break the rules you've defined.

I'd argue that hard/soft sf exists on a continuum ranging from the extreme of authors who would meet your criteria, to the extreme of authors like Ray Bradbury who prefer to write social commentaries with murky applications of science at best.

According to the purists here on Slashdot, you're wrong. Anything that violates currently-known rules of physics is "soft sci-fi" or even "fantasy", and therefore "bad". Just wait, you'll see tons of posts from the hard sci-fi purists espousing this very viewpoint.

Oh, you're right about that... there's always a few vehement objectionists on any issue, and the "nerdier" the subject, the louder--

BAZINGA!

they can get. Have you ever read Godwin's "Cold Equations"? I think that's one of the hardest SF stories I've ever read, given that the characters involved were very tightly restricted in their actions by (some would say carefully crafted) limitations of technology. It's a classic of SF literature, and yet, at the time it was written, many of the subjects direct

Again, I'm only speaking from what I've read posted by the self-proclaimed hard sci-fi fans here on Slashdot, but basically it boils down to: is the technology possible according to our present-day understanding of physics? If so, then it's kosher. If not, then it's forbidden and that makes the whole story "fantasy" on the level of Lord of the Rings, as any technology which can't be explained by present-day physics is nothing more than "magic". So if that story has artificial gravity and an interstellar

Back to "Cold Equations", I don't think there's anything in it that says "we have FTL" or "here's artificial gravity", but there's discussion about a colony on a world that isn't in our solar system, and at one point, the way one character walks on the deck of a small space boat is described.

Anyway, if you have time and an interest, give it a read: here's a copy. [spacewesterns.com]

If there's anything in the story that's beyond current physics, then it's not "hard sci-fi"

What about unconfirmed theoretical predictions of current physics, like wormholes?

Pitch Black appears to involve interplanetary travel, which again can't be hard sci-fi unless it's a generation ship that rotates to generate gravity, and while I haven't seen the movie, I doubt that's the ship they depicted.

Pitch Black has aliens in it, so I'd assume that disqualifies it harder than the magical gravity -- especially since you could easily re-write the movie with the magical gravity removed, but without the aliens there's no plot.

Unless going beyond current biology doesn't count?

There's very, very few "hard sci-fi" movies in existence that I can even think of. Even 2001 didn't really count; it had the magical monoliths.

Huh. And all this time I thought the term "hard sci-fi" was relevant to my interests. But if 2001 and Contact don't count then, well, it turns out whether something is "hard sci-fi" is meaningless to me.:/

What's the term for Sci-Fi that treats all elements that are related to known physics and technology in an accurate and rigorous way, but is also allowed to speculate on the unknown or incorporate other unexplained elements?

Moon, which came out in 2009, is a good hard sci-fi film. If that isn't hard enough for you, check out 2004's Primer which is by far the "hardest" take on time travel yet (warning: you will need a guide to understand what's going on in most of the film).

Absolutely second Primer, but Moon is -- well, there's no denying it's a hard SF flick, but it's just depressing that it gets so much (well-deserved) praise for both the hardness (from geeks) and the cleverness of the plot (from non-geeks), when it's nothing to write home about on either scale by literary SF standards. The fact that it's so damn notable is just proof that the state of SF films sucks harder than a Hollywood-sci-fi "black hole".

Your kickstarter page lists Asimov and Clarke as partial inspiration implies hard sci fi, yet also has PR stuff about how people "like the look" which implies ultra-soft sci fi.

For people who don't know the difference, just Fing google it, or wikipedia it, and the reason why its important is people who like one genre invariably can't stand the other genre and even make comments about how they can't imagine why someone would like the opposite genre.

... and the reason why its important is people who like one genre invariably can't stand the other genre and even make comments about how they can't imagine why someone would like the opposite genre.

Invariably my left butt cheek. I like both. My favourite two sci-fi authors are Arthur C. Clarke (who brought hard sci-fi to the big screen with 2001 arguably for the first time) and Philip K. Dick (one of the true great writers of the soft sci-fi subgenre).

There probably aren't many sci-fi fans who could say that they didn't like at least one of: Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who. And they're all soft as over-ripe banana compared to literary hard sci-fi.

Philip K. Dick (one of the true great writers of the soft sci-fi subgenre).

Sorry for the spoilers but he's pretty hard sci fi:

Scanner Darkly - What happens to society if a "illegal" drug were invented / produced that was optimized for industrial profit, more or less. You could soft sci fi it by simply redoing scarface with shakey cam and lasers.

Blade Runner - What happens to society when you can build robotic slaves that are almost indistinguishable from humans? You could soft sci fi it by redoing pretty much any of the slavery epic stories, lets say the start of "Roots" but the

You seem to be using "soft sci-fi" as synonymous with "crap sci-fi", which isn't correct. Soft sci-fi is sci-fi that focuses on the "soft sciences", such as psychology, sociology, political sciences; a heavy focus on character an society. Hard sci-fi focuses on the "real" sciences- fiction about the implications of physics, chemistry and engineering.

What you describe as "soft sci-fi" is not sci-fi- it's space opera. That is, where science isn't really involved, but technology is just a fantastical plot elem

Hard sci fi or Soft sci fi? There are no hard sci fi movies, at least from the past 20 years, or at least soft sci fi outnumbers hard sci fi by about 200 to 1. In books I'd dare say the ratios approach 50:50 or at least not as intensely skewed.

Well, its quite hard to do hard sci-fi without either (a) assuming the audience understood their high-school science or (b) having huge chunks of exposition (which is easier to get away with in print).

The problem with hard SF films is that you need a popcorn-blockbuster budget but you'll only get arthouse-sized audiences. The best bets are things that you could do on a small budget - like Gattaca, Moon or The Man From Earth - but I'm not sure whether people would agree that they were "hard SF" (however, t

but 2010 dropped most of the hard SF from the book (the exploration of Jupiter's moons), save the ending, in favour of cold-war thriller elements.

Good example of hard sci fi vs soft sci fi.

Hard sci fi is where adding technology makes the movie better. Primer, not OK it was mostly treated as a magic black box. If a magician puffed into existence and gave them a magic lamp instead of their little box it wouldn't change the story at all. Pretty much everything in the "Red Mars" series of books would count. Several John Ringo novels, like the posleen series are at least plausible. I've often wished for one of his railguns to shoot down seagulls. Th

For people who don't know the difference, just Fing google it, or wikipedia it, and the reason why its important is people who like one genre invariably can't stand the other genre and even make comments about how they can't imagine why someone would like the opposite genre.

Maybe for some people. I for one love all kinds of scifi, and most of the people I know also like all kinds of scifi. In fact I don't know anyone who can't imagine/stand the opposite genre.

I recently watched the "Star Wars" hexology or 6-ology or whatever and noticed all the spacecraft have jet engines, both stylistically and audibly. Which is a little weird in space. Then again the whole point of the series is "knights in shining armor fighting with swords over princesses" so its not the most anachronistic feature of the movies anyway.

It's based on the principle of a lever. To maneuver in space, to turn a craft on its axis, it is easier to place smaller engines far away from the center of mass. Consider the Babylon 5 Star Fury, or the X-Wing fighter, or even the nose thrusters on the vipers in the recent Battlestar Galactica. Now, if you have a craft that is going to be doing "interface operations", ie working both in space and in the atmosphere, then having wings makes sense. While in atmo, the wings act like wings. While in space, they act like pontoons to hold the maneuvering thrusters.

The X-Wing's engines are pretty close to the main body, and it's just the weapons that are on the end of the wings IIRC. Which is okay since Star Wars operates under the principle that Space Flight Is Just Like Atmospheric Flight... But in Spaaaaace!

The Star Fury though perfectly demonstrates the principle, as do the battle scenes it's involved in. Its weapons are close to the body and the engines spread out. It's not designed for atmospheric flight, though, so the only reason to have "wings" is for mane

The Star Fury though perfectly demonstrates the principle, as do the battle scenes it's involved in. Its weapons are close to the body and the engines spread out. It's not designed for atmospheric flight, though, so the only reason to have "wings" is for maneuvering in space.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but one problem with this design is that having the engines spread out makes your ship a bigger target, and easier to hit and disable or destroy. On a ship designed purely for peaceful purposes, this isn't

A lot of combat vehicle engineering trades safety away for effectiveness. Combat aircraft were the first to depend on fly-by-wire automation to overcome relaxed dynamic stability; for instance, without computer control, an F-16 is always on the verge of flying itself out of control and tumbling into pieces, but because the airframe isn't inherently keeping itself stable, it also doesn't resist maneuvers and consequently had the highest G onset rate of any warplane in history (i.e., most responsive and maneu

Yes, combat vehicles frequently trade off efficiency and safety for combat effectiveness. However, making your craft harder to hit is also an effective tactic in combat, but obviously there's a trade off there in maneuverability, which can be partly compensated for by making your thrusters bigger (which of course means less efficient, as you'll need more fuel for them). Perhaps a compromise could be made by locating the engines centrally, and then directing their thrust through the "wings" to the "wingtip

A lot of combat vehicle engineering trades safety away for effectiveness. Combat aircraft were the first to depend on fly-by-wire automation to overcome relaxed dynamic stability; for instance, without computer control, an F-16 is always on the verge of flying itself out of control and tumbling into pieces, but because the airframe isn't inherently keeping itself stable, it also doesn't resist maneuvers and consequently had the highest G onset rate of any warplane in history (i.e., most responsive and maneuverable).

I always thought the "wingtip" placement of the engines of the B5 Starfury precisely analogous: a risky engineering decision made in order to enhance maneuverability and combat responsiveness.

I wouldn't even call it that risky. You're making your ship a bigger target, but it's not uniformly bigger. The wings are thin as compared to the body, and there's a lot of empty space if you try aiming for them, especially when you take the extra maneuverability into account. If they do manage to take out an engine, it's unlikely to take out multiple engines on the same shot, and you're still functional with less than 4 engines, if less maneuvable. Furthermore, if the enemy is targeting your engines, t

one problem with this design is that having the engines spread out makes your ship a bigger target, and easier to hit and disable or destroy.

I don't think that necessarily follows. Spreading out the engines into multiple smaller targets seems like it would actually make them harder to hit than making the main body, which would still be the natural target, commensurately larger. Plus it would decrease the chances that multiple engines are damaged at once. Sacrificing maneuverability in a fighter for an unclear advantage in target profile seems like a bad tradeoff.

You have a point there. If the ship is designed so that it can still function with one engine knocked out, albeit with somewhat decreased effectiveness, then this is probably a better design. However, you'd probably want to make sure that the engine is designed robustly so that it being hit by enemy fire only results in it ceasing to function, not exploding and destroying the whole craft.

Who said anything about weapons or pilot view. (I suppose, indirectly, I did, because my examples were all fighters.) Anyways, the point is to change the orientation of the main engine(s). Maybe Serenity might be a better example?

Ignoring the unrealistic nature of having small, one-manned fighters in space at all, if I was piloting a ship that had super-powerful guns that had the potential to overheat and explode, I would want them as far away from the cockpit as possible.

Longer version of question: see here [cracked.com]. The Lifespan of a TV Show.

Good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Wasted stories start out good but then get stretched out to the point that the writer simply loses interest and is phoning it in. Television suffers from this disproportionately because network execs are selling viewer eyeballs to advertisers and don't really give a damn what goes between the commercial breaks. They'll keep a show going until it's no longer profitable and cancel it. Hence you get what's depicted in the Cracked post above. I can think of a lot of shows that started out strong, ended terribly, and don't hold up for a rewatch.

Do you have a plan? Something better than the Cylons because they said they had a plan and most certainly didn't.

Of all the things that have to be done to make a good movie (Script, acting, cinematography...), when it comes to Science Fiction, probably the most important is creating a consistent universe. How did you go about trying to do that - did you consciously set down an write a "Bible" or did you just wing it?

- will the soundtrack be dubstep?
- will Jery Rian be in the movie? (any role is ok)
- will it have soundeffects, even in space?
- art house or hollywood style?
- can I sponsor anything in the movie? e.g. that someone logs into the internet and opens my website vanheusden.com

I've noticed that scifi shows these days tends to come in two categories: those that make fun of themselves to be funny and those that try to be realistic by being dark and miserable. Will Space Command conform to these recent trends? Or will we finally see a return to a plot that doesn't toy with the viewers emotions?

I'd like to see a show that's a lot like Star Trek: TNG, showing a future where humans have a healthy, strong society, everyone does what they're supposed to most of the time, people aren't all a bunch of greedy selfish fucks, and they spend their time exploring the unknown and making contact with interesting civilizations.

Yes, I know it's completely unrealistic and totally contrary to human nature, and that "Hunger Games" is far more realistic, but it's fun to watch and fantasize about instead of everything being dark and miserable all the time.

In your case you put together a proposal for a film and found the funding for it, but do you think this sort of technique could be used to fund existing franchises that are in danger of being cancelled? Personally I would love to have been able to fund another series or movie of Stargate Universe. Would it be best for the fans to start such an effort, or should it come from the producers of the show? It might be a hard sell if the fans were just asking for another series without any hint of what it might contain, which could only come from the producers.

What is the premise of your story? What universal human themes will you deal with? What questions are you asking about life, the universe, and everything? And how is the setting 'in spaaaace!' going to help you ask these questions? I've read that some notable sci-fi writers are providing inspiration for the show, so I'd love to hear what sort of message your show will ultimately turn that inspiration into.

Is reading SFF is a factor in the SFF Movie Industry producers such as yourselves? If so, what Science Fiction or Fantasy are you reading right now? Or What has been, so far, your favorite SFF book? And (Or) who is your favorite SFF author? Thanks for the great memories of watching your stuff the first time.

except maybe if you're on a James Cameron-level budget. The opening scenes of Avatar and the flight scenes in Apollo 13 are the only time I've ever seen anyone try and do zero-G realistically. One with a lot of CGI and wirework, the other by filming on a vomit comet. Don't want to do that? Then you have to say you've got some form of artificial gravity, to explain why the people are walking around, almost exactly as though they were at 1G. And artificial gravity is a real game-changer.

Wasn't Space Command [wikipedia.org] a registered trademark of the Zenith corporation at one time? I wonder if their successors in interest might have a claim or could it be argued that the trademark has now lapsed? Those of a certain generation might recall that this style of television remote gave rise to the term "clicker" in reference to the distinctive "clicking" sound made when a button was pressed. This clicking sound was a combination of the spring loaded release of the miniature hammer inside the device and it's